Over 400 people turned out in London yesterday to
see Comscore and the GSMA launch Mobile Media Metrics- research that users operators data to see what people
really do on mobile. We see this as a huge step forward for mobile – which is
now the best researched medium in the UK – and the research will roll out
around the world in coming months.

Our favourite quote – “Whilst smartphone users represent just 29 per cent of the UK total
mobile Internet audience, they accounted for 47 per cent of total page views,
and 51 per cent of the total time spent online in December 2009.”

Closely followed by the fact 5 million people in
the UK access Facebook on their mobile!

With publishers now testing QR or 2D codes and
Google using them for their favourite places we think widespread adoption of
these codes is imminent. The key thing holding them back seems to be a lack of
a true standard – too many vendors are pushing proprietory codes and readers are
of varying quality. In (unscientific) testing we found QuickMark (http://bit.ly/c48EC1)
to be the best iphone QR reader. Any other suggestions?

With all the evidence
that the mobile media is big enough to warrant serious investment from brands
we should remember that much of the advertising tools are pretty rubbish. The
formats are drawn from the PC web and don’t work. So we see a major role for us
over the coming years is to innovate in terms of formats and how mobile is used
as a marketing medium. This article has some good commentary on what the
vendors are doing (registration required)

We still wonder why so much attention is paid to traditional TV which is clearly in decline as online and mobile grow in importance. Especially as we heard that almost 20% of iplayer viewing happens on mobile!

One of the things I find surprising is how many marketing people diss iphones and apps as a niche market.

My favourite was hearing that the buzz around apps is driven by the fact creative directors have iphones yet don't realise that nobody else does. Of course now you can buy an iphone on Orange, Vodafone and at Tesco (and it is rumoured that TMobile and Virgin will get you one if you shout loud enough) as well as O2, that myth is evaporating.

But I was delighted to see some new data which shows that more people have iphones than use Twitter;

A large percentage of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers and about 40% of accounts having never sent a single Tweet.

Add to that one of my favourite stats - since the start of 2007 Canalsys data shows that over 350 million smartphones have shipped.So the number of people with Smartphones is around the same as the number of Facebook users.

Now I'm a big fan of Twitter and Facebook - and social in general - but this data supports my view that brands would be much better off investing in a smart mobile strategy than jumping into social.

To help people keep up with the relentless pace of change in mobile addictive are starting a short, quick fix of mobile news that they think is significant. If you're in the mobile business it will probably seem a little Janet & John, but we think it might be useful for people at agencies and brands who aren't fully focused on the sector.

We'll do this on a regular basis, so if you or anyone you know would like to receive a copy drop a line to simon (at) addictivemobile (dot) com.

And we'll post it on here too.

addictive - Mobile Fix – January 21

Mobile search just got smarter

In the US Google search will now give search suggestions based on your location

iphone puts the ‘i’ in ‘wide distribution’iphones are now sold in the UK by Orange, Vodafone and Tesco as well as by their original supplier O2 – and it’s rumoured that both Virgin and TMobile are supplying iphones to their top customers who threaten to leave. Vodafone claim to have shipped 50,000 iphones on the first day.In France the switch from an exclusive supplier to wider distribution led to a 100% increase in iphone market share. Will we see the same in the UK?

Map it out...Maps on mobiles are big business – with Google being the key player. But Nokia spent $8 billion acquiring Navteq and now releasing Ovi maps – and navigation - free to anyone with a Nokia phone. Obviously they see a revenue stream in location specific advertising; we can expect maps to become a sub set of the search business with local retailers like coffee shops paying to be found by people in their neighbourhood.

Mob shopping - retail goes mobileWe’re seeing more and more high street brands adopting mobile strategies. Teen favourite Abercrombie & Fitch are the latest with an app and a mobile site. Site content features the latest collections, and a storefinder. We’re hoping their strategy extends to mobile search advertising – we see that as a major play for both retailers and brands to drive local footfall to shops and stockists.

Mobile banking set to overtake online by 2015With an influx of newly released banking iphone apps we’re starting to see the promise of mobile money. Although emerging markets already have established money transfer service. A survey sponsored by Visa suggests rapid growth.

We're great fans of curating content, and so we've put together this playlist of soulful christmas songs from YouTube.
It's an alternative to the rubbish played in every shop at the moment. Because it's a selection of what is already on YouTube we can't edit the graphics - so it's one to listen to rather than watch.

It's about an hour long and we find it's best enjoyed with a large glass of NZ Pinot Noir.

Having spent 3 years at Mindshare/WPP either in meetings, on
conference calls or on planes, I reckoned people needed some way to
ease the pain of this way of life. Red wine works really well on planes
but oddly enough is frowned on in meetings (although it has helped me
through a few conference calls).

So this app lets you play buzzword bingo when the powerpoint bores
get going. It gives you a word of the day to slip into the presentation
or the chat with the boss - and you can share your success story with
your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

You can find out just how much money is being wasted in a meeting
with our calculator - estimate the average hourly rate of the people in
the meeting or on the call, key in how many people are taking part and
the calculator shows you second by second how much is being wasted. You
can share the excess stories on Facebook and Twitter - we expect our
friends at Goldmans and Credit Suisse etc to get quite competitive over
this.

And when you think you really can't take a meeting, set up a
lifesaver fake call - just programme the app with the time you want to
be called and choose who you want to the call to be from - and hey
presto - your phone rings and you have the perfect reason to escape.

You can get it here - just
59p/99c as an opening offer. And for all you corporate types with the
Blackberry - don't worry help is on its way - the BB app will be
available early in the New Year. And an Android version is planned too.

And as a further incentive - we offer a money back guarantee. If you
have the app on your phone the next time we meet, I'll buy the tea/
beer - so you can't lose.

Please let us know what you think - we're interested in thoughts as
to what we add on the next version ( we already plan to add a way to
play buzzword bingo with the others in the meeting) - and please write
a review on the app store.